


Only So Much

by Laylah



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: F/M, Gen, Mental Breakdown, Psychological Trauma, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-07-14
Updated: 2007-07-14
Packaged: 2017-10-21 09:37:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/223743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laylah/pseuds/Laylah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time that Riza meets Zolf J. Kimberly, he strikes her as quiet, polite, perhaps a bit nervous. Another boy who shouldn’t be here, fighting a war that none of them believe in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Only So Much

The first time that Riza meets Zolf J. Kimberly, he strikes her as quiet, polite, perhaps a bit nervous. Another boy who shouldn’t be here, fighting a war that none of them believe in.

“Excuse me,” he says, and his accent is country for all that his diction is university, “but could you tell me where I’d find the alchemists’ command?”

“Down this road, sir,” Riza says—he blinks in surprise, as though he’s still not accustomed to the idea that he has an officer’s rank—“until the crossroads, and then turn left. You’ll see the banners.”

“Thank you.” He looks around, taking in the sweeping sands, the drab tents, the barbed wire. “It’s a long way from Central.”

“That it is, sir.” His eyes are the same color as the sand. She smiles at him and hopes it’s reassuring. “You’ll settle in. You’ll see.”

* * *

The second time she sees him is in the hospital—she’s come to visit Jean Havoc, the other sergeant in her unit, who’s recovering after having some shrapnel taken out of his leg. He’s in good spirits, at least, enough to joke about how if it had been just a little worse then he could have gotten a desk job after this, and can’t those sand rats learn to aim? Riza gives him the gift their unit put together—all of the guys chipped in part of their weekly cigarette ration, since Havoc always runs out at least two days before the new rations arrive—and he sends his undying gratitude to all of them.

On the way out she sees Major Kimberly sitting by the door, his coat off, his head down. Staring at his hands, she realizes.

There’s only so much one person can care, out here, without breaking under the strain. Sympathy is as precious a resource as water. She stops anyway.

“Major?” she says. He doesn’t respond. “Major Kimberly?”

He looks up, and it takes a few second before his eyes focus. “You’re,” he says, and frowns, thinking. “I asked you for directions the other day.”

“Yes, sir,” Riza says. “Sergeant Riza Hawkeye.”

“Nice to meet you,” Kimberly says automatically, nodding. He even smiles a little, and she thinks maybe some human interaction would do him good. She takes the seat next to him.

“So, what are you in for?” she asks. It’s too informal, no way to address a superior officer, but she doesn’t think he’ll mind.

He holds up his hands, and his fingertips are raw and blistered. “I did it to myself, really,” he says ruefully. “I’m going to have to refine my arrays a little more, so they don’t burn except in the right directions.” The smile slides off his face. “And maybe so I can use them from further back.”

“You designed your own arrays?” Riza says. She’s no alchemist, but she has a little theoretical understanding, and getting him talking about that would be better than encouraging him to think more about the fighting.

“It was my thesis for the state exam,” he says. he picks up one of the gloves in his lap, gingerly, and smooths it out across his thigh. The white kid is scorched, but there’s a clear design still there in the palm, the sun and a series of arcs and angles around it. “A two-part array to cause explosions without needing to carry volatile materials around.” He smiles again, and shrugs one shoulder. It makes him look young. “I guess under field testing it’s not quite right yet, but—” He lays out the other glove, with a lunar pattern, next to the first one. “Maybe if I smoothed out this angle, here, and dropped this stroke—”

“Major Kimberly?” an orderly says. Kimberly looks up. “Doctor Marcoh will see you now.”

Riza gets up, and smiles at Kimberly before she leaves. “Good luck,” she says. “I’m sure you’ll get the details worked out.”

* * *

She sees him around the camp fairly often, once she starts looking—the ponytail makes him stand out, even among the alchemists, and definitely sets him apart from the regulars. He seems to be adjusting badly, slowly, growing thinner and more haunted as the weeks go by. He smiles when he sees her, though, and tries to make friendly conversation, strained as it is. At first he wears his gloves everywhere, but eventually she starts to see him without them—odd, when most people want their weapons _more_ close at hand after they’ve spent a little time in the desert.

It’s hard to spare too much time to worry about Kimberly, though; Riza has her own problems, just like they all do. Havoc gets out of the hospital, goes back on duty with only a little complaining. Their unit gets assigned to provide field support for one of the other alchemists, Major Roy Mustang, who surprises all of them by being friendly and outgoing almost all the time. Riza is fairly sure she can see hints of combat stress bothering him, too, but he doesn’t let it show enough for most of the men to notice. It makes him a good leader, gives the squad confidence. Riza tries to help, tries to do what she can to keep Mustang’s spirits up.

She hopes Kimberly has someone to do the same.

* * *

When she runs into him in the MRW one night when they’re both off-duty, she’s sure he doesn’t. He’s drinking alone—she wasn’t; she’s just said night to her unit and was planning to go to bed—in a corner, his shoulder hunched, his eyes narrow. She can see blue-black smudges on the palm of his hand through his glass.

“Kimberly?” Riza says. There’s only so much she can look the other way.

He blinks a few times. “Hawkeye,” he says, and his smile is crooked, awkward, like it doesn’t fit on his face very well. “Come have a drink.” He gestures at the seat across from him, and she thinks the smear on his hand is the remains of an array.

“I’ve had plenty,” she says. “I was on my way out for a walk. Come with me?”

“Sure,” he says, with only a second’s hesitation. He gets up from the table, and she wonders if he’s always been so graceful—and that’s not something she should be noticing about one of her fellow soldiers. Maybe she has been drinking, but not that much, and it’s not an excuse she’d feel proud of using.

The air outside is crisp, quiet, already chilly despite the heat of the day. Kimberly falls into step beside her easily, and the packed sand scuffs under their boots.

“You’re drawing them right on your hands now?” Riza says.

Kimberly turns his hands palm-up. His skin looks yellow under the flat glare of the base floodlights. “They’re still changing,” he says. “Every day they’re a little different. Sometimes they change from morning to afternoon. If I tried to keep them on gloves I couldn’t keep up.”

There’s something wrong with the way he talks about them. Like they don’t belong to him. Riza lays her left hand over his right, carefully. “You must be working hard.”

His hand closes around hers, almost too tight. “It’s insane, isn’t it?” he asks, very quietly. “This whole thing. Everyone here.”

Riza nods. “I think so.” For Mustang she might lie, and try to claim that it would be all right, but Mustang isn’t _lost_ like this. Kimberly—Kimberly sounds like he honestly doesn’t know, like he’s desperate to have someone reassure him it’s not just in his head. “It’s not easy for anyone.” His grip on her hand hurts. “If you need help, or someone to talk to—”

He moves so quickly she doesn’t have time to flinch, pulling her close, his arms around her and his face buried in her hair. He’s shaking, bone-deep shivers like a hypothermia victim. “There’s no way out,” he murmurs into her hair. “There’s no way out but through.”

His left hand is splayed across the nape of her neck. She wonders if there’s enough left of the arrays to be dangerous. “Kimberly,” she says. There has to be a way to talk him down.

He leans down and kisses her, close-mouthed, hard. “Thank you,” he says. His pupils are huge in the dim light, swallowing the pale sand color of his irises. “You were—thank you.” He lets go, and turns away.

Riza watches him go.

* * *

She reports her worries, though not the kiss, to Lieutenant Colonel Gran the next morning. He thanks her for her concern, and dismisses her. She has a mission to carry out that day, and can’t spare more time to protect a second alchemist, especially from himself.

That evening, the mess is full of stories about Kimberly. He’s different, his squad says. His power seems to have tripled overnight. He destroyed an entire fortified block that afternoon. There’s something in his eyes. Riza stares at her food and feels sick.

The stories get worse as the days wear on. Kimberly laughs on the battlefield. He mocks the men in his unit when they hesitate at particularly brutal orders. He pays obsessive attention to his arrays, redrawing them every hour. Gran insists that he’s fine, even as the other alchemists look away and mutter when his name is mentioned. He’s drawing too close to violating their most serious taboos, Mustang says. It has them all on edge.

* * *

Summer is coming on the last time Riza exchanges words with Kimberly. It’s near the end of the war, when there are rumors of some super attack being planned among the alchemists, but no concrete orders yet. She runs into him as he’s returning to the base, getting off the supply convoy from the city of Lior further north. He’s not in full uniform, his jacket and half-cape missing.

“Hawkeye,” he says, smiling flatly, and raises one hand in a casual salute. The palms of his hands are bandaged.

“Sir,” Riza says, and salutes herself. “What happened to your hands?”

He tugs free the bandage on his right, unwinds it, lets the gauze flutter to the sand. The array in his palm is stark and minimal, most of the lines from the early design lost. “It’s permanent now,” he says. “They know what they’re for at last.” He steps closer, and Riza steps back. “Are you afraid?”

“Cautious,” she says. She rests her hand on the butt of her pistol. “You’ve changed.”

“Transmuted,” Kimberly says. “I’ve been refined. Broken down and rebuilt.” He unwraps his other hand. There’s blood oozing from one arc of the fresh tattoo. He doesn’t seem to care. “I’m exactly what the war needs.”


End file.
